đźś‚ The Feminine Principle in the Lineage
A canonical grounding for our community standards sourced directly from the books, writings, interviews, and lectures.
Why this topic exists: Respect for women, and for women as teachers, dreamers, stalkers, and leaders, is not an outside value imported into this community. It is what Carlos Castaneda, Florinda Donner, and Taisha Abelar actually wrote. Misogyny is treated here as a distortion the lineage’s own teachers named and set out to break, and never as a “teaching.”
This post is a wiki. Every quote carries a book, a chapter/section, and a page marker so any member can verify it. Corrections welcome.
The standard
- Respect for women is textual fidelity — the originators wrote it.
- Women are central, not auxiliary — in the Rule, women outnumber men in every party (8 to 3).
- Women’s leadership is legitimate — the male role is framed as supporting the feminine.
- This is restoration, not revision — we return the tradition to its own sources.
- Prejudice is conduct, not teaching — contempt wastes the energy the practice conserves.
This is a collection of quotes from the books, articles, interviews, and workshop/lecture notes on the subject of femininity in sorcery.
Tap to expand: From the books
From the books
The Eagle’s Gift — Carlos Castaneda
the Nagual comes in pairs; male and female.
four female warriors who were stalkers; three male warriors; and one male courier.
eight female warriors, three male warriors, four couriers, and the Nagual himself.
females have an inherent balance which is lacking in males.
The Nagual woman is a being at war and yet relaxed; ever aware but without strain.
I am a woman warrior who knows the secrets of stalking. —Florinda
Only a woman can liberate you from that. —Florinda
Her intellect was peerless. —of the Nagual woman
The Second Ring of Power — Carlos Castaneda
Women are better than men in that sense… Women have their own abyss. Women menstruate… that was the door for them.
there is a crack in women.
A male sorcerer is very difficult to train because his attention is always closed… A female, on the other hand, is always open.
the pyramid itself is the man supported by his female warriors.
The Power of Silence — Carlos Castaneda
I had been reared to despise women; to believe their only function was to take care of men.
[don Juan] found himself furiously defending women.
He was so passionate about the plight of women that he scared himself.
His benefactor believed women to be natural stalkers.
Magical Passes — Carlos Castaneda
[one series was practiced originally only by men] to satisfy an original drive for male supremacy.
Female practitioners performed these magical passes openly.
The Wheel of Time — Carlos Castaneda
Due to the effort of Florinda Matus… I was able to view my experiences with don Juan with a force I never could have imagined.
Florinda, being a true woman pragmatist, had no illusions about herself.
Being-In-Dreaming — Florinda Donner
Women are peerless dreamers.
The secret of a woman’s strength is her womb. —Esperanza
dreaming is the secondary function of the womb… a natural function in women.
the most complex state of awareness women could reach.
[women have] a unique capacity to receive knowledge directly.
Women are able to open themselves directly to the source… women’s connection to knowledge is expansive.
this has allowed men to belittle women’s gifts and accomplishments.
Women still have a direct link with the spirit.
Men define the very nature of knowledge… and from that knowledge they have excluded that which pertains to the feminine.
no one was more, and no one was less than the other.
leadership was in no way a matter of power, of prestige, or of accomplishment.
women sorcerers come and go unnoticed. —Zuleica
Men enslave women. Men befog women. —Delia
The Sorcerer’s Crossing: A Woman’s Journey — Taisha Abelar
Clara Grau was a sorceress; part of a cohesive group of sixteen sorcerers… Most were women.
As a woman, I had an even greater obligation to fulfill this requirement.
it is indispensable that women develop their intellects and enhance their capacity for analysis and abstraction.
The whole world is unfair to women! —Clara
Women are the foundation for perpetuating the human species. —Clara
The Witch’s Dream: A Healer’s Way of Knowledge — Florinda Donner
In the warrior’s path women are fierce… they never surrender… above all, in the warrior’s path, women are free.
Women have to make the bridge with their acts. We give birth, you know. We make people.
I was born with the power to heal and harm. —Mercedes Peralta
The Art of Dreaming — Carlos Castaneda
The inorganic beings’ world is basically feminine… Males are coveted in this world because they are a “little twist” on a female base.
Tap to expand: From articles & interviews
From articles & interviews
Florinda Donner-Grau — Body Mind Spirit Magazine**, Dec. 1992 (interview by Ken Eagle Feather & Carol Kramer)**
it is a sorcerer’s belief that women are universes in themselves. As universes they have no interest whatsoever in leading other universes!
Sorcerers also believe that maleness is an extension of femaleness.
The nagual is not quite a leader; he is the person who lends the sorceresses soundmindedness, sobriety, and purpose.
women are simply natural, peerless dreamers. The womb gives women that extra edge.
The conceptualization of reason has been done exclusively by men and this has allowed them to belittle women’s gifts and accomplishments.
Men’s need to dominate others… has been a most nefarious alliance.
Men define the very nature of knowledge… and from it they have excluded that which pertains to the feminine.
Florinda Donner-Grau — Dimensions Magazine**, Feb. 1992 (“Being-in-Dreaming,” interview by Alexander Blair-Ewart)**
we women are relegated to the status of second class citizens. No matter what power we have, we still don’t have any real power. We don’t decide anything.
Florinda Donner-Grau — Magical Blend #35**, 1992**
The overall order of our social structures prevents that energy from being free so women can dream. Were that energy free, it would simply overthrow the “civilized” order of things.
Florinda Donner-Grau — interview, 1993
We are basically a male Universe… whatever rules us is only the male principle… it has to be balanced.
women have… the biological constitution to evolve.
Florinda Donner-Grau / Taisha Abelar / Carol Tiggs — joint interview, 1994
There is no way for females to compete against that energetic advantage as long as they are imitating roles that males have created.
For female sorcerers, part of this comes into enhancing the secondary functions of our wombs, which are the dreaming organs in the female body. —Carol Tiggs
Taisha Abelar — radio interview, 1993
females don’t have to go through these seven gates, they just can do dreaming very, very naturally because their assemblage point is more fluid.
Tap to expand: From workshop & lecture notes
From workshop & lecture notes
Women’s Workshop — UCLA, March 1996 (participants’ notes, Ixtlan mailing list)
the universe was female, and that the male is an extension of the female. —Carlos
the male is generated from the female… the male principle is rare in this female universe and therefore gets much unearned attention.
the second function of the womb… is that the womb is a “thinking” organ… it perceives.
her womb perceives directly so her knowing is direct.
no female should allow a man to tell her what to do; he is not qualified to do it.
we should never allow a man to “dominate” us… males are rare, and they are frail.
to dominate others is not part of the female principle; there is no need for it.
women are who will bring about the evolution of mankind. —Carol Tiggs
the guide in fact has to be from the womb. —[why the Nagual “jokes about just being the chauffeur”]
Florinda Donner-Grau — workshop lecture, 1997
The old shamans had a special interest in freeing the womb. The second function of the womb is evolution.
Women have an extra organ for perception — the womb… beings capable of direct perception.
Women are the pinnacle of evolution, but without the men it is not possible.
Carol Tiggs — lecture notes, 1997
Women are perfect practitioners of not-doing.
Women are blessed with the natural ability to do whatever they need to do. They have a direct connection to the Dark Sea of Awareness.
Women’s navigation Q&A — 1999
If we try to be men… we miss out on our best possibility: the direct perception of the womb.
[females can] direct the energy of the womb through their eyes, through their entire beings, and interact from the direct knowledge of the womb in their daily lives. —Taisha Abelar
*Sources: the published books of Castaneda, Donner-Grau, and Abelar; the Castaneda Compendium of notes, periodicals, and interviews; and archived workshop/lecture notes from the Ixtlan mailing
What this means for how we run this place
- On women’s leadership: A woman holding a stewardship or moderation role here is fully consistent with the canon. The texts frame the masculine role as supporting the feminine — so ideas such as “this community shouldn’t be led by a woman” has no footing in the source material.
- On misogyny: It is a conduct violation, not a viewpoint to debate. The founders — including don Juan himself, in The Power of Silence — treated contempt for women as conditioning to be broken.
- On homophobia and other contempt: Misogyny seeks to keep women in a subordinate position. Many forms of prejudice, including homophobia, are sustained by rigid social expectations about gender, power, and whose lives are considered valid or worthy of respect. In practice, disdain toward people who do not conform to those expectations often grows from the same impulse to police, diminish, or control others. This is a path concerned with conserving energy and cultivating clear perception; contempt, prejudice, and dehumanization are drains on the very energy we are trying to gather. They are forms of self-importance and social conditioning, not acts of freedom. Prejudice is never a protected “teaching.”
- On enforcement: Moderators may link this topic when explaining a decision, so action rests on the shared canon, not any individual’s authority.
A note on honesty: this was built by reading each book individually. Passages that complicate the picture are included and labelled, not hidden. Even so, the repeated, explicit throughline across all three authors is the same — women are central, powerful, indispensable, and legitimate leaders in this lineage.
Wiki — please add corrections, better chapter references, or additional passages below.